DXD SI : Chapter 1.2 (Patreon)

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A year had passed since the day he figured out that he had more strength in his baby body than a regular human adult, and the same alarms regarding his parents continued to ring to this day. He had yet to see hide or hair of his father, or rather, his sperm donor. The one who gave birth to him still breastfed him, but the appearances had become rather infrequent, and her appearance had also grown more haggard.

He could now bench press himself as well as the crib with ease. Single fear pushups were a piece of cake for him. 

Aside from the absurdity that was his physical body, he had also discovered something else. It was a feeling of warm, electrifying something flowing through his entire body. He could feel it surge forward towards his hands whenever he was about to do something no baby should be able to do. 

He could feel it whenever he tried to think of banishing the sleep away, and it actually did it, allowing him to go for three days without sleep. He could go on for longer, but refrained from doing so out of fear of hurting his baby physique.

So, like any proper isekai protagonist, he began investigating this mysterious energy, especially since he could feel it being consumed wherever he tried to do something that was clearly supernatural. 

Negating his need to sleep for a small period of time used up a significant portion of that energy, exhausting him a bit in terms of energy but keeping him awake and alert in terms of his mind and body.

It was weird, having a third thing that could get exhausted. He had lived an entire lifetime being exhausted in just mind and body. Now that he had yet another sense of being exhausted, he could feel it very clearly.

Meditation helped, to an extent, but circulating the energy around his body was hard and took time, but did nothing. He didn’t feel his body being purified or his cultivation increasing or anything like that.

He couldn't even get the energy to come out of his body. No, it stubbornly refused to come out to play and only heeded his commands whenever he tried to do something with his body. He could increase his already monstrous strength using the energy, but he had no feasible way of testing its limits, so he dropped that. 

He tried to fly, but the best he could do was make his legs stronger and jump to the ceiling. Also, ow!

Just like that, his explorations continued, with meditation being the only way that was feasible to his current baby self. Maybe if he was an adult or a teenager, he would have had the level of freedom required to do the destructive testing that was necessary to gauge his physical strength.

The next thing to do when you had an innate source of energy was energy manipulation, no matter what kind of energy it was. He was very excited to figure out what kind of energy it was.

Was it Qi? Chi? Magic? Cosmic Energy? Electricity? Heat? Lava? Dimensional Energy? Demonic Energy? Chaos energy?

Anything was acceptable to someone who had been an average run of the mill human in the previous lifetime.

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Just like that, yet another year passed. His energy manipulation increased to the point he could actually see the energy just writhing below his skin, and yet, it still refused to come out. It was a dark red energy that just moved underneath his skin, and it was fascinating to watch the red glow appear beneath his skin wherever the energy moved, but equally frustrating as it never came out.

He couldn’t cast magic without it coming out!

All he could do was stupid physical enchantment, something that he couldn’t even test or use properly right now. It was extremely disappointing that way because he had no way to get that dopamine hit when someone looked at the results of their hard work. It was hard to stay motivated for long without seeing any results, let alone doing it while being a baby.

Aside from that, the visits from his mother reduced even more in frequency. Now she came in maybe twice or thrice a week, looking more and more haggard as time passed. He also couldn’t quantify it, but it felt like her milk was no longer as nutritious to him, as if his body was compensating with his innate energy. 

Her appearance suggested as if she was going to die. Curiously, or rather, disturbingly depending on the perspective, he hadn’t spoken a single word since he was reborn in this baby body. First, he knew that babies couldn’t speak properly, so he refrained from making any noises entirely.

Secondly, there was no one to talk to, and if he wanted to talk to himself, he might as well do it in his mind, instead of being branded as the creepy baby that talked to itself. He didn’t know the denomination of his parents, but that was just grounds for enhanced baptism or exorcism, in plain terms. Especially if they knew what his body was capable of.

So, he kept mum in hopes of keeping attention away, and he might have screwed himself. His vocal words were not really developed beyond grunting or huffing or sighing. He hadn’t spoken a single word since he was born, and this lady, who looked as if she was on death’s door, deserved to have a baby that could speak.

With that thought in his mind, he made up his mind to do something before the lady croaked. Having done her job, the lady lifted him up to examine his naked body, after which, she would clothe him and then place him in the crib, only to disappear for a few days at the very least, after which she would return, looking more pale and sick.

As she was about to clothe him, he opened his mouth and tried to speak, only for nothing but a grunt to escape his lips. A grunt that she expertly ignored. He frowned and tried harder, straining to get his words.

“...Ma…” They were faint and incomplete at first, indistinguishable from his regular grunt, but by the third time, he could get the word right and also the volume right, “ma…Ma….ma….MAMA!” 

The lady froze, her grip tightening a bit on his body, something he barely felt before she hurriedly corrected herself and brought him closer to her face, her eyes searching for something in his before she dropped him in the crib and fled the room.

The door slammed shut behind her as he lay in the crib, blinking in confusion, looking up at the ceiling, his throat feeling weird as he subconsciously moved the energy within him to the throat. The uneasiness immediately disappeared.

His attention was not on that, though. He was more concerned about what would come after. He had wanted to do a sweet gesture towards the woman who still came to see him despite looking like she was on the verge of collapse. He expected something. Smile, tears, maybe an acknowledge but not her running out of his room.

He would not lie, it kinda hurt. Not in a crushing way but in the same way as a person not returning your greeting after you greeted them enthusiastically. Hell, he had spoken his first word today, so maybe a little excitement was not wrong to expect.

Then again, that would have been true in a normal world. This was not really a normal place was it?

He was 90% certain that this was not a regular Earth with no supernatural stuff in the dark. No, the fact that they expected him to survive on just that meagre nutrition meant this was normal for them. The fact that he survived and was not getting poked and prodded by doctors and scientists meant it was not abnormal for them, and that was the thing that told him that one of his regular reading genres had just come true for him.

Isekai.

He was in another world with a cheat. Granted, the energy was rather stubborn, but the physique it granted him alone would be a tremendous cheat, provided it was not the same for everyone here.

Then, it would be a rather bland isekai story.

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It was only a day since he saw her, when the door to his room opened up on its own. It was dark outside, which meant someone had come here in the evening for the first time. Instinctively, he knew that it was his mother.

He lifted his neck, his eyes widening as much as a baby’s could, to see her stumbling forward, as if she was dragging herself forward through sheer will.

The room itself was plunged in darkness, but this new awesome body also came with limited night vision. Nightvision that was boosted immediately when he let the energy flow to his eyes, allowing him to sharpen the image he was seeing.

His brows furrowed as he took in the finer details. She almost looked like a zombie to him. Her eyes, though, were locked onto him with a strange intensity. Still, he felt no threat from her, and even if she tried to do something, he liked to think of himself as being more than capable of getting out of her hold.

But she did nothing. She just stopped right next to the crib, leaning forward a bit, only to nearly fall on the crib. She held herself upright next to the crib by holding onto the metal bars, her gaze never straying from him.

She gave him a shaky smile, and he instinctively knew what to do. 

“ma..ma…Mama,” he said again with a much lower voice this time, but she heard him all the same. Her shaky smile bloomed into a full blown smile, her eyes tearing up, as she looked relieved, as if a heavy burden had been lifted off of her.

Then, the moment passed, and the shaky smile returned as she looked at him and said in a very faint raspy voice, “I’m sorry…..Magdaran.”

The name rang in his mind. Huh, so that was his name. Good to know. No one had said anything to him so far, so this was the first time he had heard himself being addressed.

Then, his attention was brought back to reality by a thudding sound. He scrambled upright to see that his mother slumped on the crib, her head hanging just above him, her eyes vacant, and her mouth open.

His jaw hung agape as he looked at what he was pretty sure was the dead body of his mother. His eyes unconsciously teared up, and a heavy pain settled somewhere around his chest.

Instinctively, he sent the energy to the hurting area, to remove or dull the pain, as he had done before, but this time, the pain didn’t go away, at all. In fact, it only increased the more he looked at the zombie like face of the woman who gave birth to him.

Frustrated and confused by the emotions he was feeling, he sent in all the energy he could towards his chest, trying to drown out this unpleasant feeling. He knew one thing and one thing only, and he did not want to feel like that.

He wanted to destroy that feeling.

And in a way, it came true, as a violent outburst of dark red burst from within his body, consuming everything in his sight, as he blacked out.